Russell Peters and Keenan Ivory Wayans back comics who want to shock

Russell Peters, Roseanne Barr and Keenen Ivory Wayans at 2014 NBCUniversal Summer Press Day at The Langham, Hunington Hotel and Spa in Pasedena in Los Angeles, California, United States on April 8, 2014. (Brian To/WENN.com)

Bill Harris, QMI Agency

Russell Peters and Keenen Ivory Wayans, what do you think of Joan Rivers and the current state of comedic discourse?

Peters and Wayans are two of the three judges on the eighth season of Last Comic Standing, which wraps up with a two-hour finale, Thursday, Aug. 14 on NBC. As veteran comedians themselves, Peters and Wayans are uniquely placed to talk about comedy and television and social media, and how one affects the other through the prism of their show.

It seems lately that the 81-year-old Rivers has been creating controversy virtually every day for her comments about everything from war in the Middle East to Justin Bieber. But were people reacting differently to Rivers and her ilk 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years ago? Does society have a different gauge of what's controversial now in terms of comedy?

No matter how you look at it, both Peters and Wayans come down strongly on the side of comedic freedom.

“I think the public and the media and whoever dictates what political correctness is are the people that are really almost trying to ruin comedy,” Peters said bluntly. As a Canadian with Indian roots, Peters never has been shy about pushing the envelope with his brand of racially aware humour.

“Comedy is about people saying things that everybody's afraid to say,” Peters continued. “Comedy's the last bastion of freedom of speech. And America is always bragging about, 'Our freedoms, and the rest of the world wants our freedoms, and they don't like our freedom,' and our freedom of speech, we don't have that any more. We have to word everything so carefully now that it actually makes our job far less organic, because we can't speak the way we need to speak.”

Thus, some of the younger comedians Peters has seen on Last Comic Standing are speaking a different language. He suggested that isn't necessarily a bad thing for comedy, his more general worries about free speech notwithstanding.

“I think the younger generation of comics that comes up (living in today's world), it's great for them because they're wording things a certain way and writing a different way, which adds a new element of comedy,” Peters said. “But there will always be the old guard, like myself and Keenen and Roseanne (Barr, the third judge on Last Coming Standing) who don't care about political correctness, we say what we need to say.”

Wayans indicated that if a comedian isn't stirring up controversy, at least from time to time, then he or she isn't necessarily doing their job.

“There always has been political correctness, there always has been conservatism,” Wayans said. “I mean, when I did In Living Color we were at the height of conservatism, it was the Reagan era. And it was just my job to come in and say all the things that nobody else would say, and I caught hell. You're not a good comedian if you're not catching hell.

“So in terms of what you said about being able to gauge it, you shouldn't even try.”

But has social media hurt in this regard?

“Yes,” Wayans agreed emphatically, before I even had finished the question.

“Here's where social media and the Internet has hurt art, period, is that people invade the creative space. So now you have cameras at comedy clubs and places where comedians are working out material. And then it's being presented before it has been formed. My brother Shawn has a great line where he says, 'It's like judging a baby based on the sonogram.'

“There are places where the art form is developed before it's presented to the main stage, and as long as you have people coming in and invading that space, you inhibit creativity that way.”

Long story short, Russell Peters and Keenen Ivory Wayans clearly support comedians continuing to rock and shock the world, regardless of who ends up being the last comic standing.